Letters to the editor - Dec. 13, 2012

Wednesday

Dec 12, 2012 at 9:48 PM

For nearly a century, the American Judicature Society has supported merit selection, a nonpartisan method for selecting qualified, impartial judges to serve on state courts. We were pleased when Gov. Bev Perdue used an executive order to establish a commission to nominate candidates to fill interim vacancies on the bench in North Carolina.We were therefore dismayed last week, when the governor chose to bypass her nominating commission to take advantage of a last-minute opportunity to appoint a justice to the N.C. Supreme Court before her term as governor expires. Her choice seems to undercut the incentive for her successor, Governor-elect Pat McCrory, to make use of a nominating commission when he is choosing interim appointees.Since they were established in the 1970s, executive-order nominating commissions in Delaware, Georgia, Massachusetts and New York have played an important role in the selection of those state's judges, through several subsequent administrations, regardless of their political party. To advance partisan goals, Perdue is now sacrificing the very mechanism she created to help reduce the role of politics in selecting North Carolina's judges. In the long term, we fear this will threaten the existence of the commission and its work.Dennis Courtland Hayes, Columbia, Md.

The writer is president of the board of directors of the American Judicature Society, which describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan, membership organization working to protect the integrity of the American justice system.